


Everest

by 80000_Bees



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Mount Everest, cute gays on dates, date, datefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 23:59:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2601143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/80000_Bees/pseuds/80000_Bees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a few more people than usual at the top of the world's highest mountain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everest

The Death Zone.

Everyone reacted differently to the phrase. Some shivered. Others went quiet, remembering how dangerous it was. Others laughed it off, attempting to be carefree. Others still would square their jaws, acknowledge the risks and work to minimise them, and do the climb anyway. Because this was Everest – and for all its danger Everest was worth climbing.

Joan Deuorett fell into the last category of climbers.

This was the French mountaineer’s eighth climb. Even by her own admission she was probably getting a little long in the tooth to be doing this – the cold was getting to her joints more than ever. She’d told herself that her sixth climb would be her last – she seemed to be addicted.  
Part of it was the challenge of getting to the top. Everest’s peak – the Death Zone – was unique on earth. It was so quiet and still – no wildlife, no plants, just stone and snow and wind. Beautiful and deadly. Part of it was the people you met – every nationality came here to climb the mountain, and they were all bound together by their desire to get as high as they could. Language barriers were overcome by the mountain. 

Joan’s party had two Englishmen, two French women, one French man and a tiny Australian woman. They were doing their attempt in the twilight hours of the morning, to see the sunrise from the top. All of them had done at least three climbs, except for the Australian – this was only her second. Joan had been worried about her, but she seemed to be doing as well as the rest of them. Certainly, she didn’t complain as much as the Englishmen, but then again they’d all stopped complaining when they went over the 8,000 metre mark. There wasn’t enough oxygen to waste on complaining.

Over 8,000 meters was the Death Zone. It was the coldest area on the mountain, and coupled with the thin air it made putting one foot in front of the other a marathon. You focused on taking one step, then the next, then the next, until you were at the top. The air was thin. Over 8,000 it was impossible to acclimatise to the height – staying up there too long was fatal. It was blisteringly cold. You walked without being able to feel your nose, ignoring the aches and pains and blisters of having walked so far and focused on climbing to the roof of the world. You were going out of bounds, and it was thrilling.

Jan glanced back around to check on her party. She was walking first in line to set a steady pace and stop anyone getting left behind. All were present and accounted for, working hard at walking. The tiny Australian – Taylor – was second in line behind Joan, and waved at her expedition leader. I’m okay.

Joan nodded, waving at the whole group. She and Taylor were wearing oxygen tanks – everyone else was strong enough to walk without them. The extra weight was a pain, but it helped the two smallest members of the group breathe easier.

They were within spitting distance of the top now. They’d passed “Green Boots” a while ago now – the distinctive, long-mummified body of Tsewang Paljor. They’d passed a lot of bodies. There were over two hundred corpses in the Death Zone, often lying where they’d fallen years before. Retrieval was impossible at this altitude. Some of them were draped with flags and plastic flowers or teddybears – other climbers would come specifically to make makeshift graves for fallen comrades. There were a lot of American flags. Either Americans were very good at dying in attempts for the top, or felt the strongest urge to come back and drape their colours over their fallen.

They were a few meters from the top now. The blisters on Joan’s feet hurt. She hoped Taylor was doing okay. The conditions were excellent for a night climb – a few degrees warmer than normal, and only a light breeze as opposed to the howling wind that had accompanied Joan on her fourth climb. The approach they were taking meant it was impossible to see the highest point until you were on the topmost ridge – a lot of people who hadn’t climbed the mountain seemed to think that there was a flat plateau at the top, like Mount Kilimanjaro. In reality, it was more of a cliff – a winding long knife edge, with the tallest point at one end.

Joan had been told that her group was the only group attempting the summit today, so when she stuck her head over the ridge and saw two other climbers, she was shocked. Not by the fact that there were others up here, but what the others were wearing.

Neither of the men was dressed for climbing. One was wearing a greenish jacket and jeans of all things, his head bare and brushing snow out of his brownish hair. The only climbing equipment he had was an oxygen canister – but the breathing rig for it was the delicate nose tubing they used in hospitals, not the half-face masks used for mountaineering. The other man was slightly better dressed – he wore a few more layers under his ill-fitting tan overcoat but had no oxygen rig. And again, nothing on his head – a few stray snowflakes were caught in his scruffy dark hair. By all rights they should have frozen to death. They were sitting hip-deep in snow, for crying out loud. But they didn’t even seem remotely fatigued by the high altitude, let alone cold.

Taylor had walked up beside her to see why she’d stopped, and Joan could see her wide eyes behind her pink ski-goggles. Taylor’s presence jolted Joan out of her shock – she started walking again, waving her group up onto the ridge, and starting the final walk to the highest point where the two men were sitting. Suicidal underdressed climbers or no, they were here to get to the top.

As they approached the men, Joan could hear them talking. They were Americans. Of course they were Americans.

Overcoat was talking. ‘I used to come up here a lot, back before the apocalypse.’

Green jacket seemed to have had his breath taken away by the view. ‘Yeah, I can see why.’

Joan found herself turning back around to check if she wasn’t hallucinating this shit. Judging by the weirded-out gawping expressions of the rest of the party, she wasn’t the only one seeing this.

Overcoat continued. ‘It’s… peaceful.’

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Humans call it “The roof of the world”. I think I understand why.’

By this point Joan and her party had reached where the two were sitting. She coughed politely, not entirely sure how to go about this. Overcoat looked around at her, blinking big blue eyes. Green jacket whipped around like someone had set off a firework.

‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ said Joan. ‘How in the fuck did you get up here?’

Green jacket grinned. ‘Magic.’

Overcoat with the blue eyes gave her an enormous smile which made him look about ten years old. ‘We’re on a date.’

Green jacket attempted to retreat into his green jacket, with a hard look on his blushing face.

Taylor walked around from behind Joan, pulling a glove off her hand to reach into her pocket and pull out her camera. Next to the two underdressed men, she looked like a brightly coloured plush toy in her heavily insulated gear. ‘You mind if we hang out here for a bit? We’ve been climbing for a while.’

Green jacket still looked embarrassed. ‘Sure.’

Overcoat was peaceful, smiling. He looked like a man who was content and happy for the first time in a long while. ‘You came up here the hard way.’  
Joan smiled ‘Because it was there.’

‘Humans,’ said overcoat in an admiring tone.

‘Yup,’ said green jacket.

They didn’t talk much after that. Photos were taken, comments made – mostly the view was admired. After the initial shock nobody really worried about the two men. Someone asked how they were keeping warm. Overcoat responded, ‘Keeping one hundred and two kilos of matter at thirty-six degrees isn’t very hard. I gave him an oxygen tank because I wanted to concentrate on him, not adjusting the atmospheric pressure around him.’

Eventually, Joan’s party had to leave. They left the two men up there, waving to them as they went. They never found out their names. The party that climbed the summit the next day did not report anything unusual – no men, or bodies. No trace that they had ever been there.

Joan’s party stayed in touch – the mountaineering community was close knit like that. They didn’t talk about the men. It was just too strange. But two days after they returned to their respective countries, Taylor sent Joan a photo in an email.

It was of the two men. They hadn’t seen her take the photo, and she’d caught them smiling at each other. Sitting waist-deep in snow on top of the world, faced with one of the most breathtaking views in creation, surrounded by mountaineers and they only had eyes for each other.

Taylor wrote, “I wish I could give them a photo of their date.”


End file.
